


the linear path

by Val Mora (valmora)



Series: the temple of all the worlds [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Bajoran Religion, Hopeful Ending, M/M, No Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi, Unresolved Romantic Tension, canon-typical eye stuff, crises of faith, the aftermath of the Cardassian occupation, xxc and sl are incapable of truly random walks on a graph because their paths always intersect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26633617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: This boy who knows Song Lan's other name, whose face he does not know, has a d'ja pagh that cradles his ear like a rime of shining frost, and the gem that hangs from the chain glows like an open Celestial Temple. His pagh must be like a thunderclap made flesh."You have the advantage of me, sir," says Song Lan."Do I?" says the boy. He sounds surprised. He says, "I am Xiao Xingchen. I saw you in a vision and I know my path runs parallel to yours."
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén
Series: the temple of all the worlds [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971289
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	the linear path

**Author's Note:**

> See end for a note about Song Lan's heritage with respect to the Bajoran Occupation.
> 
> For obvious reasons, there's some religious content in this fic. I've taken small pieces of Buddhist thought as light inspiration for the structure of the Bajoran faith. Occasionally in this fic I use the phrase "right action." This is a key term in the actual, real-life Earth religion Buddhism, but in this context it's intended to be an English-language translation of a made-up Bajoran theological concept that's something closer to the modern Jewish concept of tikkun olam. Bajoran monastic vows in this portrayal, however, bear strong similarities to Buddhist principles - with, in adherence to canon, the exception of not requiring strict celibacy.
> 
> I'm a little sorry about the graph theory joke in the tags, but not sorry enough.

The prophet, considering the Sisko's words. The prophet and a desire to experience linear time. At the moment of decision, he will come back; he is already back; he will always be back and has always been back. He has gone and will go. This knowledge, a pleasure.

His teacher: A question. The strangeness of linear time. Change, in linear time.

The prophet: An awareness of sureness, past and present. 

A boy on Bajor. A vision: the boy's body. An empty husk of a corpse. The body, full. A question.

The boy: when I am dead? I may be old then. 

The prophet: I accepted. I...accept. This possibility.

The boy: Yes, Prophet. Yes, when I am dead.

The prophet wakes in a bed and does not sit up. There is something across his forehead: a medical device.

There are three people staring at him.

"Hello?" he offers. The one the boy's memories identify as a doctor looks shocked indeed.

"Oh," says the prophet. "I apologize. I made an agreement with this boy that I would have permission to use his body after he died."

"Stop joking!" cries one of the others, a grand-niece. "Stop!" 

The prophet looks at the body's hands and arms. It looks correct. "I don't understand," he says.

The doctor shows the relatives out. The doctor trained away from Bajor and is not an adherent of the Bajoran religion, although she wears a d'ja pagh on her ear. She will feel differently than the devout about this matter.

He does not wish to be a god, so he has assured that he will not be with people who treat him as one. 

The doctor helps arrange matters for him. The legal precedents are much like those of Trill, which is a species he heard of from the Sisko, who carry each others' memories in worms in their bellies. He would like to meet a Trill! He would like to meet all sorts of people! He is meeting funny people and angry people and kind people all the time, and so many of them are sad as well.

The doctor says, "Aren't you supposed to see the future? Since you are a Prophet."

Xiao Xingchen, who borrowed the boy's family name to honor him and took a given name to please himself, says, "It's more difficult when outside the wormhole and in the body of a linear-time being. So not really, not at all."

This will, someday, be thought theologically interesting. He doesn't know that, though, because before he turned off all the lights in the heat-hazed space of his existence as a nonlinear being, he had not decided to say that thing, and the doctor had not asked.

Song Lan is a boy in a monastery, and almost a man. He looks out at a scoured world, a scoured quadrant, and wants to travel it, and to bring help. 

There are prophets, and Prophets. Kai Gao: _Faith is also right action_. A different war, a very long time ago, generations upon generations. Song Lan, a boy in a monastery, practices faith in action, and goes into the world.

"Zichen," says someone behind him at the market, too loudly and in something like relief. "Zichen, I found you," and every head in hearing range swivels.

Song Lan, born of two worlds, with two names on his records, turns.

Song Lan's d'ja pagh reads of the temple he came from, that he is a monk, that he is of a martial path. This boy who knows his other name, whose face he does not know, has a d'ja pagh that cradles his ear like a rime of shining frost, and the gem that hangs from the chain glows like an open Celestial Temple. His pagh must be like a thunderclap made flesh.

"You have the advantage of me, sir," says Song Lan. 

"Do I?" says the boy. He sounds surprised. He says, "I am Xiao Xingchen. I saw you in a vision and I know my path runs parallel to yours."

Song Lan believes that some people have visions. Some of these visions may even be from the Prophets. "What is my path?" 

"To travel and help others," Xiang Xingchen says promptly. 

Song Lan says, "Who sent you?" 

"I did?" Xiang Xingchen says, in clearly growing confusion. "I saw you and I sent myself. To see the world." His face falls. "This is not right at all. I have done it wrong."

Song Lan has met people before who thought they had received a vision from the Prophets. It's a professional hazard. None of them has known his less-used name, but then, that is what directories are for.

"You know my purpose," Song Lan says. "What is yours?"

"I want to experience linear time," Xiao Xingchen says, "And meet people, and help them, and travel the Quadrant."

Song Lan says, "Perhaps you are right and our paths are parallel."

It has not escaped Song Lan's notice that Xiao Xingchen has not reached for his ear to feel his pagh. 

"Can I get you deka?" Xiao Xingchen asks.

"If I may purchase one for you," Song Lan says.

"Oh," says Xiao Xingchen. His eyes go wide. "So that you will owe me nothing," he murmurs, clearly to himself, and then nods. "Yes," he says. 

The cup holding deka tea is hot in his hands. He likes deka. It has a bitterness that strains the mouth, and a sweetness after, like fruit. 

"Zichen," he says, for the pleasure of the name, for the pleasure of Zichen's gaze flicking to him.

"How do you know that name," Zichen says.

Xingchen doesn't like questions like that. They're hard to answer. Zichen will not touch him, even if of all people Zichen would not fall to his knees at beholding Xingchen's pagh. It is good. They do not need to feel each other's pagh to know one another.

"Should I not call you that?" he says instead. "I can call you Song Lan, if you like."

"I prefer it," Song Lan says. He is lying. Xingchen knows this because he will know it, because Song Lan will tell him so someday - or maybe he won't, now, because Xingchen already knows it, and then maybe Xingchen will forget and will always call him Song Lan. Causality is painfully linear. He should will have complained about the pain of knowing Song Lan altogether even before they met in linear time, when Song Lan knows him not at all and thinks Xingchen is delusional.

"Then that is what I will call you," Xingchen says. 

"Thank you," Song Lan says. "I should call you…?"

"Xiao will do," Xingchen says. "My personal name is Xingchen." Someday he told Song Lan, greatly daring, to call him simply 'Xingchen,' but that was a linear future that has not happened yet and now may never happen at all. 

"I'm going to Jalanda next," Song Lan says. This will not have been the linear future Xingchen knew. 

"I've never been there," Xingchen says. "What are you going there for?"

"The surrounding areas are heavily mined and there are old dead who need burying from the Occupation," Song Lan says. His gaze is level. His d'ja pagh is a series of linked chains in a matte grey metal, with a violet stone bead set into the base to mark him as the most worldly rank within the monastic orders. The length of his hair hides the scaled ridges of his neck.

Xingchen says, "Let me help."

Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen spend three months working with a team on the Jalandan branch of the Reconciliation Commission to de-mine the fields around what used to be the town of Jialai. They often find bones, which they collect and scan for genetic markers. Cardassian remains are to be sent back to Cardassia Prime, as part of the treaty.

It's slow, slogging work in the winter chill. 

Xiao Xingchen is always warm. He says, "This body is from the Janitza foothills; it's used to cold," as if this is a normal thing to say. He doesn't have the accent of the southeast, let alone of Janitza Province. 

Song Lan grew up in a city on the coast, in a bright, warm monastery, and in the cold he grows sleepy and sluggish. He is tired, and the work is grim. That is not the only reason. 

A month in, there's a cold snap. The workers' trailer, which has inadequate heating for this region, drops to a temperature near freezing overnight. Before going to sleep, Song Lan accepts a half-dozen of Xiao Xingchen's heat packs and tucks them in at his shoulders and back. He wakes muzzy, groggy, and as tired as if he never slept, to Xiao Xingchen touching his clothed shoulders and saying, "Song Lan, wake up." The words are blurry. His eyelids are like stones. His hands are numb. His thighs ache with cold. 

"'m tired," Song Lan mutters. The thought that Xiao Xingchen might have touched his skin while he slept is uncomfortable, but not the skin-crawling horror he usually feels at thinking about others' touch.

"Song Lan," Xiao Xingchen says. He says something else, something about Song Lan being too cold. Song Lan can't focus on what he's saying. It doesn't matter; it's so cold, he's just going to lie here and be quiet.

"Song Lan," Xiao Xingchen says, more urgently. "You need to warm up. May I bring you to the medical area? I will have to touch your clothes."

Warmth does sound nice. Song Lan grumbles assent.

Xiao Xingchen picks him up, gently, and carries him to the little room off the sleeping area where the medical office is, where it's warm, so warm, like a physical blow. 

Xiao Xingchen lowers him onto a medical bed and Song Lan rubs his face against the wonderfully hot pillow and drags it to his belly and curls around the warmth of it.

He comes alert by degrees, literally. The shame creeps in along with it. He was an idiot. He should have known his metabolism would go wrong when it got this cold. His mother's home was always warm, and she hated the winters, would bundle them both up in coats and heating blankets until the warmth returned.

"Thank you," he tells Dr. Sun. "I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"It's no trouble," Dr. Sun tells him. "You'll be fine as long as you stay warm enough that your metabolism stays active. Were you having trouble before this?"

Song Lan says, "Working outside wasn't bothering me until yesterday."

Dr. Sun nods. "That was below ten degrees. People of mixed Bajoran-Cardassian heritage tend to struggle at those temperatures, but sixteen degrees should be safe. We'll requisition extra heating equipment to keep the sleeping area warm. The others will thank you."

Xiao Xingchen comes to visit him an hour later, red-cheeked from the cold. It's nearly freezing outside. Inside the medical area, it's a cozy twenty-five degrees.

"You're awake," Xiao Xingchen says. He sounds relieved.

"Yes," Song Lan says. "Thank you for taking care of me earlier."

Xiao Xingchen's lips part, a little. His mouth is pink, and chapped. "I only noticed that you weren't waking," he says.

"Still," Song Lan says. "I owe you a debt."

"No," Xiao Xingchen says fiercely. "Never. I do not permit it."

Song Lan is a ra-d'ja, that most worldly of monastic ranks, and of the most martial of the paths of his religion. In the old days, ra-d'ja often traveled, bringing religious rituals to far-flung rural communities that would never see even a Prylar. There are few ra-d'ja in these times. People say, if you will travel the world, and live in it, what is the use of being a monastic? If you wish to be a monastic, why not live in a monastery and dedicate your life to religious study?

Refusing a life debt is a profound act. It denies a path joined by the Prophets. It denies the saved person's honor. It denies the rescuer's pride. 

Song Lan nods. "I understand," he says. If Xiao Xingchen's path is parallel to his own, as Xiao Xingchen seems to believe, then Song Lan will not owe him this debt if he does not wish it.

"But how will you keep warm?" Xiao Xingchen says.

"Dr. Sun will order extra heat packs. And more equipment for the sleeping area as a whole," Song Lan says.

"It will take days to arrive," Xiao Xingchen says. He narrows his eyes at the wall behind Song Lan. "If you share a cot with me you can use my body heat," he says. "Thirty-seven degrees should be warm enough, shouldn't it?"

Song Lan works his jaw, and says, "It should." If Xiao Xingchen thinks they have parallel paths only, he is not doing a very good job of acting like it. Or maybe he's simply very, very generous, and Song Lan is the one who sees more in his actions than is there.

Xingchen was has remembers this: Song Lan's deep breathing, the lay of the mattress under their dual weight.

The sleeping area is cold. There are blankets over the two of them, and heat packs on Song Lan's other side. Xingchen could keep him warm so well, curled up together touching like tokka kits, but Song Lan doesn't want touch, not at all. 

He pushes the lowermost blanket closer to Song Lan's back as insulation against the cold. His palm brushes against the fabric. Xingchen would will touched him there, feeling the bones of his spine and the rough texture of his skin. Now he does not, and may never. It is all right. He accepted this when he came into the world: that by stepping into linear time, he was selecting a true future that he could not unmake, could not put aside.

A couple mornings later, Hara Pazho, one of the other workers and an old Resistance fighter who's never said a word about Song Lan's features, says to Song Lan, "Where's your path-sharer, Ra-d'ja Song?"

Song Lan can barely put words together for his response. The other workers have called him _Ra-d'ja_ occasionally, but never Hara. He is humbled by Hara's respect. _Path-sharer_ is an old word, brought back in these more secular times. It means: one whose life's work is the same as your own and who can help shoulder the load, your dearest friend, your soulmate. The one for whom the path laid out by the Prophets is the same as your own, for all your lives. 

"We are not -" He feels the shrivel of embarrassment in his shoulders and the frills of his neck. "Our paths run in the same direction for now, that is all." The other workers must all think they are lovers. He thinks Xingchen is beautiful and strange, that is all. They are sharing a bed only for Song Lan's safety.

"Ah," says Hara. "My mistake." He doesn't sound flustered. He sounds amused. Song Lan wishes he himself were not flustered; it makes him sound like he is lying.

Land-clearing tours are three months long; at the end, the workers have a month-long leave, and then may sign up for another stint. When Song Lan and Xingchen return to Jalanda, they take rooms in a monastery that is properly heated, and over a quiet meal in Song Lan's quarters, Xingchen says, "Where will you go next?"

"I haven't decided," Song Lan says.

"I was thinking of Cadho II," Xingchen says. 

"Offworld," says Song Lan, very quietly. He looks down into his bowl of stricken-greens soup. It means Xingchen can't see the look on his face. "Why Cadho II?"

"Helping replant native vegetation," Xingchen says.

Song Lan nods slowly. "All right," he says. 

Cadho II is a tropical planet. Song Lan is uncomfortable with how comfortable he finds it. Xiao Xingchen is usually sodden with sweat and yet still full of interest in everything they see, eager with curiosity about the plants and the stinging bugs.

They do not share a cot. It's just as well. Song Lan is at no risk of brumation in this climate, but if they were to share a cot anyway, Xiao Xingchen sleeps in very little clothing in this heat, and they would touch skin to skin, gritty with the dust in the air, and Song Lan would not be able to bear it. 

Song Lan doesn't think that Xiao Xingchen would be offended by Song Lan's appreciation of his appearance. In the months they have spent in each other's company, Xiao Xingchen has been offered romantic overtures a handful of times. Generally, he doesn't seem to notice - or pretends he doesn't. Song Lan thinks it's the former, from how he reacts to the less subtle advances: surprise, thanks at the compliment, and a gentle disengagement.

After the second such offer on Cadho II, three weeks into their stint in the restoration team, Song Lan says, "You aren't interested?" 

"In what?" Xiao Xingchen says. Song Lan suspects he's being disingenuous.

"In romantic entanglements."

Xiao Xingchen passes a smile at Song Lan over his soup. One of the conspiratorial ones, that remind Song Lan that Xiao Xingchen is polite, and strange, and overly generous, but not innocent or childlike. "I don't think that was what they wanted, do you?"

Song Lan winces with awkwardness. "No."

"I'm not interested in just sex," Xiao Xingchen says. "This body is a shell and I inherited it. If I can't show my partner my whole self, I might as well - " he makes a gesture to indicate masturbation. 

Song Lan chokes, struck by the image of Xiao Xingchen touching himself while Song Lan watches.

"I see," he says finally.

"And you?" Xiao Xingchen says. He lets go of his spoon into his mostly-empty bowl of soup and rests his chin on his palm, fingertips resting gently on one cheek. His index finger drags a small line down the outer edge of his cheekbone. Song Lan can nearly feel that touch against his own skin.

He touches his own ear, indicating the base of his d'ja pagh. "Sexual restraint is one of the vows," he says.

"Meaning?" says Xiao Xingchen.

"To treat sex as an intimacy of the heart and spirit, not only of the body," Song Lan says, on firmer ground here.

"I can understand that," Xiao Xingchen says. The metal-encased gem that hangs from his d'ja pagh shines even in the low light of the dining tent. Song Lan has a sudden, strange urge to lick it, to take it into his mouth and drink down its light. It would weight his tongue, bruise the roof of his mouth, clatter against his teeth. His mouth is watering.

Their gazes stay locked for too long. When Xiao Xingchen looks back down at his soup, the silence lasts too long after that. It is not their usual silence, of working quiet beside one another on some task. Or maybe it is, and Song Lan is just counting time by his own quickened heartbeats.

Well into their stint, Song Lan's PADD breaks down. This means he borrows Xingchen's. Frequently. 

Xingchen had not previously realized how much time Song Lan spent on his PADD. Because Song Lan has a PADD now. It's Xingchen's.

"Can I have my PADD back?" Xingchen says.

Song Lan hums out a noncommittal non-answer that means he isn't listening.

"PADD," Xingchen repeats.

"Five minutes," Song Lan says.

"You said that five minutes ago."

Another noncommittal noise.

"PADD."

"Personal possessions are the gate to avarice," Song Lan says, still not looking up. 

"Ra-d'ja Song," Xingchen says, starting to get annoyed, "Those things of merit which are mine may also be yours, but a PADD is not a thing of merit and I want mine back!"

Song Lan's head jerks up, and then, slowly, he gives Xingchen the PADD. "Sorry," he mumbles.

"No need to apologize," Xingchen says, and settles in on his cot to read himself to sleep.

Ten minutes after Xingchen has lain down under the bug netting, the artificial lights in their tent turned off, Song Lan says, "Did you know what you were quoting?"

"What?" Xingchen says. 

Song Lan's voice is tentative. "About things of merit." 

"I heard it from my teacher," Xiao Xingchen says. "She uses it to talk about the things that make people interesting."

"That's," Song Lan says. He breathes in. "Your family wasn't religious, were they?"

"No," Xiao Xingchen says, with absolute honesty.

"It's from a lesser-known prophecy," Song Lan says. Xiao Xingchen has a bad feeling about this. Being inside the body of a being of linear time, and allowing himself to experience it fully, means that he is subject to linear time too. So he doesn't know what's coming, but it worries him.

"Is it?"

"The visions of Laho," Song Lan says. "The Prophets told him, _Those things of merit which are yours please us. Give them to strangers, that those things of merit which are yours will belong to all._ "

Xiao Xingchen licks his lips. "I've never heard that one," he lies. 

Song Lan says, "I don't believe you."

Xiao Xingchen says, "I don't want to talk about it."

Song Lan's skin and clothing rustle against his cot. "If that is what you wish," he says formally, and is silent. 

It's Song Lan's idea to go from Cadho II to Izignu - the long way, working their passage on a freighter that makes intermediate stops on the way. But Xingchen likes it, and over the course of the journey, he learns how to pilot the ship - first using holographic practice sessions on the captain's PADD, and then under the supervision of the ship's pilots. Song Lan sits with him at the helm, touching nothing, looking out at the stars and keeping Xingchen entertained.

Song Lan has excellent taste in music, and poetry, and when the pilot, who has a remarkable fondness for Arcturian eco-rebellion music, inflicts it on them, he listens with what Xingchen considers admirable patience. He asks questions. He might actually be enjoying it.

This leads to, variously and over the following several days: 

\- lectures on Klingon opera from the assistant engineer of the ship

\- the last century of Terran popular music, from the ship's captain, who is Andorian

\- an ethnomusicological analysis of Orion dance music, from the first officer

\- Song Lan sharing a handful of traditional Bajoran work songs

Each of the work songs is used for a different task: fulling fabric, hand-stirring vats of fermenting vegetables, sowing seeds. The songs are all obscene if the listener has any grasp of the Zhentu dialect of Bajoran. 

Song Lan is from Yohma, the capital of Zhentu district. He surely knows. 

The night after Song Lan's lesson, Xiao Xingchen says, "I didn't think a ra-d'ja was permitted to speak of the kinds of things those songs are about."

Song Lan's gaze slides to the floor. Xiao Xingchen doesn't think it's out of modesty. "I know one of them is about making dumplings," he says. "And the vegetable song is about the opening of the Celestial Temple to accept lost spirits." He pauses. "The sowing one is definitely about sex, though." His face comes back up. He's smiling, faintly.

Xiao Xingchen laughs, and he says, "Where did you learn those songs?"

"At the monastery," Song Lan says. "During the withdrawal, we had to do a lot of things the old way." 

Xiao Xingchen says, "How long had you been in the monastery by then?"

Song Lan's smile fades. He takes a breath. "I have to make deka if you want to talk about this," he says.

"Please," says Xiao Xingchen. "But only if you want."

Song Lan's shoulders straighten, then fall. "The only people who know are people who were part of it," he says.

Xiao Xingchen says, "It would be an honor."

The mug is warm in Xingchen's hands, and he and Song Lan are sitting on Xingchen's bunk in their shared quarters, side by side, not touching.

"My mother's name was Ezerat Lamash," Song Lan says, then adds, "Family name Lamash."

Xingchen would touch Song Lan's elbow now, if he could. To show that he is listening, and to give comfort.

"She worked at the university in Yohma," Song Lan says. "My father - I don't know. My mother used to show me pictures of him. He died when I was five. In an attack." 

He drinks from his tea. 

"My mother thought it was important to make sure I was brought up in a way that honored him," Song Lan says. "So she made sure I had a good religious education." His mouth quirks. "She would say that. 'Religion was important to your father so I want you to have a religious education because we agreed on it for you.' Stuff like that. She'd drink red leaf tea and grade papers at a teahouse across the street during services."

Xingchen's mouth cracks into a smile. "That sounds very open of her."

"She was good to me," Song Lan says. "She loved me." He passes Xingchen a watery smile. "I miss her." 

"I can imagine," Xingchen says. 

Song Lan drinks some more tea. Looks towards the door, away from Xingchen. "I went to the monastery - after," Song Lan says. "I was ten. They already knew me there. And I was already..." He points up towards the stars, then sketches a curve near the outside of his right ear, indicating his inclinations towards religious faith. 

"Did the Emissary change things for you?" Xingchen asks.

Song Lan shrugs. "I always believed the Prophets were real. To have sceptics and the Federation believe that the Prophets are a kind of alien doesn't bother me. Benevolent beings of great and unknown power who take an interest in the well-being of a people is...not so different from believing in a government, in the end, for me."

Xingchen tries to imagine his family as the government employees he worked with to have his identity formalized. It boggles the mind. "I suppose," he says. 

Song Lan gestures with the cup as if casting the topic aside. "At any rate, the withdrawal started about a year later. I became skilled at repairing solar panels and helping make do without electricity. So that the power we had could be used for the important things. The old monks remembered old songs and would teach them to me. Prylar Arif taught me the one about the Celestial Temple. He said there was no reason that women should be the only beautiful people with songs about them."

Xingchen laughs. It feels good, letting go of the pain in the conversation, even if only for a moment. "I don't think that's what it's about," he says. "Or Prylar Arif was uninformed about the anatomy of women." He grins over at Song Lan, who is watching him, mouth curled into a smile.

Song Lan's gaze is warm, eyes lowered, as he says, "I've heard that even that part of a person can be beautiful."

Xingchen thinks - he thinks - he is - "I think every part of a beloved can be beautiful," he says, hope and affection permeating him, and then: Song Lan does not know. Song Lan does not know what he is. Song Lan thinks that Xiao Xingchen is a boy from Janitza Province. 

Xiao Xingchen says, panicked, "Can I refill your tea?"

Song Lan's gaze jerks from his mouth to his eyes, and then away. "Yes," he says. "Please."

Xiao Xingchen says to him, three days before they leave, "Do you want to go back to Bajor for the Gratitude Festival?"

Song Lan hadn't even considered it.

"Do you?" he says.

"I thought," Xiao Xingchen says, "that we could visit your monastery, and participate in the festival. And then afterwards there's someplace I'd like to go."

Song Lan turns to look at him. Xiao Xingchen took his pilot certifying exam two days ago at their last stop-over. He just got off shift as acting pilot of the freighter, and his eyes are enormous with stress and excitement. His hair is bound up in a knot at the back of his head, from which strands are escaping. He is being cagey. 

Song Lan rubs his gloved fingers against the welding stylus, then puts it down and pushes up his face shield. "Why?" he says.

"I'm not ready to tell you yet," Xiao Xingchen says.

"...will I like it?" Song Lan says.

"The Gratitude Festival?" 

Song Lan narrows his eyes. "The place you want to go after."

Xiao Xingchen's mask of contained delight slips, something flashing across his face. "I don't know," he says. "I don't think that would be the right word for it. I think it would be meaningful."

"Is it Cardassia," Song Lan says. "Or any planet currently part of the Cardassian Empire."

"No." Xiao Xingchen says firmly. "It has nothing to do with Cardassians. Stop trying to guess." He tries to give Song Lan a smile, but the smile's edges waver.

"If you say so," Song Lan says. He doesn't like the feel of it. He trusts Xiao Xingchen's honor and his love for others. He's not sure he trusts Xiao Xingchen about this. But Xiao Xingchen has surely earned it, since they met. He should have more faith in his friend.

Song Lan spends the week before the Gratitude Festival cutting bateret leaves for burning, and cutting ritual paper into slices for people to write their wishes and thanksgivings on. His Old Bajoran glyphs are workmanlike, not beautiful, but these days most people only know the regularized glyphs, and even his hand is needed for the ritual inscriptions.

Xiao Xingchen can't spell. His writing is a mix of pre-regularization glyphs, sometimes misused phonetically, and the modern ones. After the third time he mis-labels ritual papers as being for sending wishes to the Prophets-spelled-with-the-glyph-for-decision-rather-than-holiness, he gets reassigned to helping cook the ritual feasts. When Song Lan comes to dinner that evening, Xiao Xingchen's clothes and hair smell so heavily of hefeng spice that he's like a walking Gratitude Festival sweet-shop all by himself.

As a child, Song Lan used to lick pato sweets until they were nothing more than slivers, and then he'd exhale hefeng-scented breath into his mother's face while she laughed and hitched him up higher on her hip so he could see over the crowds.

He could share that memory with Xiao Xingchen, now. And not worry that it would hurt either of them for him to tell it.

He slides one of the communal dishes of stewed beans and root vegetables closer to Xiao Xingchen. "You'll like this one," Song Lan says. 

The Gratitude Festival is lush with the smell of burning bateret leaves, and the bright decorations hanging from special hooks in the walls of the temple glitter in the light from the sun and, at night, from lanterns. The temple garden is small, but very beautiful, even full of celebrants on the first night of the Gratitude Festival. 

Because of the monastery's tradition of martial training, there is a public demonstration of unarmed combat techniques. Song Lan has never participated in these, and does not now: he trained with these monks every day through his teenage years, and they know him. The crowds of spectators do not, and they will see only some collaborator's Cardassian by-blow trying to usurp their heritage.

He stays in the back of the monastery and helps make sure the trays of sweets are refreshed regularly and that the urns of burnt offerings don't suffocate with ash. Xiao Xingchen stays beside him.

Long after the middle of the night, when the crowds have died down, Xiao Xingchen takes him out into the monastery's small gardens and they sit on a stone bench under a bateret tree. The sky is too bright with reflected light from the city to see the stars.

The gem on Xiao Xingchen's d'ja pagh glimmers blue onto his hair and his jaw.

"I feel so light," Xiao Xingchen says. "I'm tired, and I want to go to sleep. But I want to get up and dance, too."

"Yes," Song Lan says. Like having an impulse engine in your wrists and ankles, driving you onwards. 

"I want," Xiao Xingchen says. He makes a frustrated gesture, clasping his hands together palm-to-palm. "To keep this. Just like this, this moment, forever. And live in it."

Song Lan smiles. "There's no future in a single moment."

Xiao Xingchen turns and squints at him suspiciously. "Is that a quotation?"

"The visions of Anwo," Song Lan admits. " _There is no future in one moment, only a series of moments which we enter in the progression of the stars around us._ "

Xiao Xingchen says, thoughtfully, "Yes. Exactly."

"So you won't stay in this moment forever?" Song Lan says.

"I suppose not," says Xiao Xingchen. "I'm looking forward to what's coming, I think."

"I hope so," Song Lan says. In his innermost hopes he wants Xiao Xingchen's secret next stop on their journey to be Janitza, and Xiao Xingchen's family's home. It's profoundly unlikely - he knows this intellectually. There is nothing between them that would merit it. But if that path were on offer, he would walk it, and with joy.

Xiao Xingchen gets them passage to Deep Space Nine. When they get there, he asks, politely, and while Song Lan is sleeping off the space-lag, if he might borrow a shuttle.

This does not get him very far. Eventually he persuades the Bajoran administrator to put her hand to his ear, waits for her to stop huddling in the corner weeping, and then asks again. After that, he has an appointment with the Station Commander.

She is a woman of medium-height. He recalls her from the Sisko's stories as having a strong and decisive character, and profound faith.

He says, "Commander Kira. My name is Xiao Xingchen, and I would like to beg a favor of you."

She glances at him, then down at her PADD. "That depends what it is. Why did Major Pang put you on my schedule?"

"She was sympathetic to the nature of my request," he says. She has not invited him to sit, so he does not.

"And what is your request?" she says.

"I would like a shuttle to take into the Celestial Temple," he says.

"No," she says. 

"Please," he says.

She sighs. "Look, kid." She puts down the PADD. "We get a lot of people who think that if they go into the wormhole they'll receive visions of - their future lovers, or the future of Bajor so they can make a lot of money. The station isn't here to do that. It's part of the defense of the system."

"I'm taking my path-sharer to meet my family," Xiao Xingchen says.

"You don't have to ask the Prophets how that's going to go," she says, with a deliberate gentleness laid like skin over obvious frustration.

Xiao Xingchen says, "Not my family on Bajor," and tilts his head in the direction of the wormhole.

"O...kay," she says, very dubiously. 

He has to swallow a laugh. She thinks he's delusional.

"Commander, please," he says, and steps forward to stand across her desk from her, and offers his hand. She ignores it, rising to stand, and reaches out, almost touching his ear. He nods, and she does.

Her knees buckle, but she remains standing. She is even more stern with herself than the Sisko said she would be.

She collapses back in her chair and stares at him. He bears it. He is aware that he looks nothing like what he is supposed to be. That's all for the better.

She shakes her head in disbelief and laughs, a little. "Ha," she says, clearly to herself, and then to him, "You need a pilot."

"I'm licensed," he says.

She shakes her head again. "Of course you are." She massages the bridge of her nose, then taps a few things into her PADD. 

"I can get you six hours in one of the small shuttlecraft tomorrow, starting at 0700."

He nods. The trip from the station to the wormhole at impulse is quite short, less than twenty minutes. "Thank you, Commander."

She nods. "Dismissed," she says. 

He can't help but smile. Things of merit. His teacher would like her.

The next morning, station time, Xiao Xingchen takes him out from the living quarters to the docking bays, and into a trim little shuttle that is either military-issue or a luxury model.

As Xiao Xingchen is negotiating undocking procedures, Song Lan says, "Do we have permission to use this ship?"

"Of course," Xiao Xingchen says.

" _How?_ " Song Lan says. 

"I asked very nicely," Xiao Xingchen says.

Song Lan stares at him. "Did you threaten someone?"

Xiao Xingchen gives him a strange look. "No?" he says in bemusement, and goes back to the comm.

Xiao Xingchen takes them deeper into space, towards the emptiness that is the path towards the Gamma Quadrant, and the Celestial Temple. Song Lan says, "Do we have permission for this flight path?"

"Yes," Xiao Xingchen says. He flips a few switches and says, "There, it's on autopilot for a few minutes. Look, there's the Orb-weaver." He points out at the constellation, then, further to the left, "And the Tokka."

Song Lan doesn't follow the direction Xiao Xingchen is pointing. Xiao Xingchen is avoiding some topic, or delaying. 

"Why are we here," Song Lan says.

Xiao Xingchen's arm drops into his lap. His shoulders drag inwards as he looks downwards at the piloting controls. "I have something to tell you."

"I thought you might," Song Lan says. 

Xiao Xingchen jerks his head in a nod. "I didn't grow up in Janitza," he says.

"I thought not," Song Lan says. "You don't have the accent."

Xiao Xingchen shakes his head, brows furrowing, and then he looks up, and meets Song Lan's gaze, and he says, "I know I will do this before, but I don't remember it ever would be like this."

"What," Song Lan says.

"I grew up there," says Xiao Xingchen, and points out at the expanse of stars.

"On a different planet?" Song Lan guesses. This is - strange, even for Xiao Xingchen. If Xiao Xingchen didn't look so frustrated Song Lan would think it was supposed to be some kind of joke.

"You could - feel my pagh," Xiao Xingchen suggests. He leans forward, face open with desperation and longing. Song Lan's hands itch at the thought. He rubs his palms together, awkward, unwilling, just as there's a flare of blue light like a flower unfurling, and the Celestial Temple opens for them both.

Song Lan is in the smaller dining hall in the monastery. Xiao Xingchen is sitting next to him, and across from them is the ship's captain from their freighter run. Next to her is Prylar Bevet, who ran the training grounds in his childhood. Beside her is Hara Pazho.

"Xingchen," says Captain Ti'awat, in a disappointed way.

Xingchen says, "I choose. _I_ choose. I want to ask him to choose."

"He cannot," says Prylar Bevet. "It would destroy him. He does not even understand this much."

"Because I didn't have a chance to tell him!" Xiao Xingchen says. He turns to Song Lan, beseeching. "You see? Couldn't you feel it, even without touching?"

Song Lan looks at him. 

He has heard of what visions from the Prophets are like: important people in the recipient's life appear to them, but don't speak with those people's voices. They speak of the future, or provide advice or warnings. 

He's never heard of a vision where the Prophets in the bodies of your mentors argue with your best friend. Never in such familiar tones. He is not given to madness or hallucinations. And this is a continuation of the conversation Xingchen has been trying to have with him.

There are legends about Prophets walking the world in the guise of mortals before, but always there was some sign, but until now Xingchen never claimed to be anything except a boy from Jan- no. He said _this body_ was from Janitza. He never said _he_ was.

Song Lan covers his mouth with his hands to stop from screaming. Xiao Xingchen with his glimmering d'ja pagh made from - what? Made from the holiness of his true nature, or the stuff of the wormhole, whichever it might be. Xiao Xingchen calling him by the name his mother gave him before they were even introduced. Like in some other place or other time or other world Song Lan had given him permission to use it, or that he'd looked at Song Lan's childhood and known that Song Lan had gone by it once and not known that after his mother's death he began to use only his Bajoran name.

Xiao Xingchen meant to take him here. Not to some family in the Janitza foothills who must be missing their son. Here. 

"Why?" Song Lan moans, through his fingers.

Xiao Xingchen lays his hands on the floor beside where Song Lan is kneeling, coming close. Song Lan flinches back. 

"Why did I leave the wormhole?" Xiao Xingchen says, too fast, desperate, fingertips grating against the stone. "I wanted to see the world and help it and - and be your friend, if I could."

"Why _me_ ," he can't breathe past it. The Prophets saw him and one of them stepped out of the Celestial Temple to be his friend? What makes him worthy? What do they want of him? He's nothing, a nobody, an orphan reminder of an occupation that never should have happened, that the Prophets did not prevent. 

"Because I saw that we could be friends," Xiao Xingchen says. 

"How much of me is because you wanted a friend to play with," Song Lan says, and Xiao Xingchen stares at him, frozen open-mouthed.

"I didn't - I didn't," he stutters, "I wouldn't, I - "

"How much of my path did you write for yourself," Song Lan says. "My father? My mother? You already knew everything about me, that's what you are, it's - " 

"No!" Xiao Xingchen says, "No, I swear, I never, I set my path to yours not yours to mine, I only wanted to be beside you, I - " he stops when Song Lan shakes his head in denial.

Song Lan does it again, and then again. Shuffles away from this horror pretending to be his friend. "I can't trust your word," he says. "You've been lying to me the whole time. I don't know you."

"You do!" Xiao Xingchen says. "I am Xiao Xingchen, I like terrible jokes, I can't - can't spell, I - "

"You're _not_ ," Song Lan says. There's a pain growing in his temples, and his vision is blurring, it hurts, it hurts - 

"No," Xiao Xingchen says, desperate. "No, no, no -"

His teacher: His denial of you. A repudiation of his vows.

"No," Xiao Xingchen says. "He didn't. It's my fault. He is faithful. I betrayed him. Give it back. Give him back his sight. Take mine."

His teacher: You, blind to time, linear in body and mind. Blind in body also?

"It doesn't matter," Xiao Xingchen says. He turns his body's face up to her. "I failed, not him."

Song Lan wakes up. He is not in the shuttle. He is in a medical facility.

"Hello," says the doctor. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired," Song Lan says. "Where is." He can't say _my friend_. He can't say the name. "How did I get here?"

"Well," says the doctor, "you and your companion both had some damage to the visual cortex. You've been asleep, recovering, for a couple of days."

"Where is he?" Song Lan says. He and Xiao Xingchen are going to talk. He is going to get answers. He is going to - 

"He was discharged yesterday," the doctor says. "I don't think he stayed. Did you know him?"

Song Lan turns his face away from the scanner the doctor is using and closes his eyes. "No," he says.

Song Lan goes back to the monastery. In his rooms, he takes off his d'ja pagh. He looks at it sitting on the nightstand. The violet stone in the base glows faintly in the dark, and the sight of it makes him weep. There are too many things to miss. He should not have expected benevolence from gods.

He doesn't put it back on the next morning. His hair covers his ears, when he wants it to. And he goes to see Prylar Arif, who taught him how to garden.

"Ah," says Prylar Arif, when Song Lan sits down beside him and starts weeding. "It's good to see you!" He does not reach for Song Lan's ear, because all the monks know that he does not like to be touched.

"You, too," Song Lan says. He digs his fingertips into the soil. "I need some advice."

"Heartbreak?" Prylar Arif says knowingly.

Song Lan considers the half-a-dozen moments where he held back, despite wanting to kiss Xiao Xingchen more than he was afraid to be touched. "That too," he says. "I - had a vision."

"From the Prophets?" says Prylar Arif.

"Sort of."

"Here, weed properly and tell me about it," Prylar Arif says, handing him the basket for the weeds.

When he has finished with his story of the trip in the shuttle, and finished crying, again, Prylar Arif says, "I heard a story that when Kai Opaka, " he cuts off the usual memorial phrase that follows her name, _whose spirit has joined the Prophets_ , and Song Lan is grateful for it, "announced that the Emissary was Benjamin Sisko, then-Vedek Winn remonstrated with her. Vedek Winn was upset that the Emissary was Human rather than Bajoran. And Kai Opaka said to her, _One should not look into the eyes of one's own god._ " Prylar Arif nods, satisfied with this retelling. "I think perhaps you were asked a terrible thing, to knowingly look in a Prophet's eyes and call him friend." 

"I," Song Lan says. He nods, still staring at the patch of herbs.

Prylar Arif says, "Or not only friend?"

"I thought," Song Lan says. "Not - in action."

Prylar Arif sighs. "Ah. So it is heartbreak and the Prophets both."

Song Lan rips up some more weeds because he refuses to cry in front of Prylar Arif about this again. 

"I cannot tell you what you should think, or do," Prylar Arif says. "But I know we would be happy to have you stay here while you heal. If you can bear it."

"Thank you," Song Lan says.

The d'ja pagh of his vows stays shut up in a drawer. He has another, without the sign of his monastic rank. Some days he does not wear one at all, but on those days he mostly does not leave the monastery. Some of those days he does not leave his room.

For some time, he is certain that Xiao Xingchen left the world and returned to the Celestial Temple. But then he remembers the wild joy Xiao Xingchen felt at piloting a ship, and for a time after that, he is sure that Xiao Xingchen is out in the quadrant, trying to do good among the stars. And nearly every day he thinks: there's no point in guessing where he is. I never knew him.

Some days, it's followed by: he wanted, very terribly, for me to know him. 

Song Lan has no idea what it means that even Prophets can want to be known. 

At the Gratitude Festival of the second year, he opens the drawer with his formal clothes, and fishes a little cloth bag out from where it was buried. He slides open the mouth of the bag on the drawstrings and pours his old d'ja pagh out into his palm. The stone still glows faintly. His heart aches to look at it, but it feels right when he puts it on. He walked a dozen planets side-by-side with a Prophet, and his d'ja pagh is the mark that the Prophets - or maybe just that one - left on him.

Maybe today or tomorrow someone will see it and say, _Hey, I met someone with a d'ja pagh that shone like that last month,_ and tell him of a boy in white in such-and-such a system doing good, and Song Lan will know that Xiao Xingchen is well.

Nobody does. He didn't really expect it, but it would have been - nice.

The quadrant is a large place. He might as well go see it.

He leaves the monastery and picks up shifts on colony-supply ships, moving medical supplies and food aid, occasionally staying to help. There are so many places in the quadrant where it's possible to do good, just with his own hands. 

He learns enough about ships to help out in engineering. He learns enough about medicine to provide emergency medical care. He learns a lot about being around people.

He decides to go home for the Gratitude Festival. Not home to the monastery - although he would be glad to see them, he wants to be a guest, for once. So he goes to the capital.

Watching the fireworks, he hears the girl's voice, first: "You're being unreasonable!" 

"Of course I am. There are half a million people in this city for the festival," says Xiao Xingchen, in a mild but certain tone that Song Lan, through a haze of shock, terror, longing, and eagerness, identifies as _paternal_.

"Ugh!" she says. 

Song Lan turns around. He has to look hard. Xiao Xingchen is still wearing white, but in among the bright colors of the festival, he's hard to spot. The girl has a shock of white hair and small antennae - possibly Andorian ancestry. She has her arm linked with Xiao Xingchen's.

Song Lan puts his shaking hands in the sleeves of his robes - the formal ones, for the festival - and makes his way through the crowd.

"Excuse me," he says.

"We're not interested," says the girl dismissively.

"I'm not selling anything," Song Lan says. Xiao Xingchen's eyes are open, but they aren't tracking - is he blind, now?

"Well?" the girl says. "What do you want?"

"Does this one have the honor of addressing the entity known as Xiao Xingchen?" Song Lan says in the most formal of the Bajoran registers not intended for speech to the Prophets.

"Yes," Xiao Xingchen says. His head is tilted with curiosity. "You have the advantage of me, I think."

"My name is Song Lan, and I once had a friend who called me Song Zichen," Song Lan says. 

"Oh!" Xiao Xingchen reaches out convulsively, as if to touch him, and then jerks back. "Oh," he says, again, this time not joyful at all. "I - yes. I did not know you would be here."

"Is she like you?" Song Lan asks.

"No," Xiao Xingchen says, over the girl's annoyed, "Is he talking about me?"

"I think," Song Lan says, "that we should talk."

"Talk about _what_? Uncle, do you know this creep?"

"I cannot leave my ward," Xiao Xingchen says, tilting his head to indicate the girl.

"I can take care of myself!"

"I know," Xiao Xingchen tells her, reassuringly.

"Does she know?" Song Lan asks.

"Know _what_?" 

"No." Xiao Xingchen shakes his head, definitive.

"You guys are being so weird," she says.

Song Lan says, "You should have seen your guardian before he knew you. _That_ was weird."

Xiao Xingchen giggles, putting his hand to his mouth to cover it, and then he is laughing outright, and crying, little hiccups of sobs breaking through, face in his hands.

"Xingchen - " Song Lan says, wanting and not wanting to reach out, following Xiao Xingchen in kneeling on the pavement with so many people glancing at them and then away in embarrassment at Xiao Xingchen's faint hiccuping sobs.

After several moments, while Xiao Xingchen's composure returns, the girl accuses Song Lan, "You _broke_ him."

"I did not mean to," Song Lan says. "Could I buy you and your ward some deka? And then we can talk."

Xiao Xingchen wipes at his eyes and smiles. "Only if I may buy yours," he says.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Heritage:** In this fic, Song Lan, aka Song Zichen, is half-Cardassian, half-Bajoran. The Cardassian heritage is from his mother, and his parents' relationship was consensual. This is not intended to wave away the canonical implication that most children of such mixed heritage on Bajor are the product of rape or coercion by male Cardassian occupiers. I just didn't want to write him as the child of rape. However, that his parents' relationship was consensual does not excuse his mother from having been a part of the occupation and its attendant horrors, or his father from (potentially) having been a collaborator in that occupation. 
> 
> Song Lan sees himself as Bajoran, of partly Cardassian heritage, but he is profoundly and at all times aware that other people may not see him this way due to his physical appearance.


End file.
